Chapter 7. TESTING FOR CONCUSSION
If in doubt, sit it out. That’s
currently the best way to
ensure that a concussion
isn’t made worse by a second
head impact. But it can be a
tough call to make, particularly
for a professional sportsperson
whose career could hang on
how quickly they get back on
the field. What if there was
a simple test using blood or
saliva that could be given
within a few minutes of a
suspected concussion to
provide a definitive, reliable
answer as to whether a player
was concussed or safe to rejoin
a match? It could also be used
regularly in the days and weeks
after a concussion to determine
exactly when the player had
recovered enough to return to
the sport.
A bedside – or in this case,
field-side – test is a key area
of concussion research. It
has become particularly
important in recent years with
the growing understanding of
the more serious long-term
consequences of repeated
concussions.
Developing such a test
involves finding a suitable
biomarker – something
released into our body fluids
in response to a head impact.
The challenge is determining
which specific biomarkers and
their ‘amounts’ are unique to
concussion.
It’s still early days, but there
are already some promising
candidate biomarkers that
could form the basis of such
a test. For example, there are
already blood tests in use
for TBI, such as the S-100B
test. However this looks for
a marker of more serious
brain injury, the kind that
would need neurosurgery.
On a sporting field, that sort
of injury would be obvious
enough that a blood test
wouldn’t be needed.
A distinctive physiological
feature of concussion is
Damage to the brain as a result of a head injury. A severed axon
(above), shown in the centre of the illustration, prevents impulses
travelling from one neuron to another. Blood vessels can also be
torn during head injuries, and the resulting bleeding causes a
compression of the axons with the risk of a coma.
ILLUSTRATION BSIP/UIG/GETTY IMAGES; PHOTOGRAPHY OSTILL/SHUTTERSTOCK